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Alex Cross, loosely adapted from the novel Cross by James Patterson, has all the earmarks of something contorted and condensed to fit into the 100-minute time limit imposed on mass marketed motion pictures. Parts of the movie feel inexcusably rushe...

More than twenty years after the deaths of director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune, the names remain entwined. For nearly two decades, the pair combined to make some of the best Japanese movies to hit the world stage. And, although Ku...

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Tokyo Sonata) isn’t known for subtlety or restraint. Although Before We Vanish represents a change-of-pace (a sci-fi film that, as is the case with many sci-fi films, examines the human condition), many of h...

The Hidden Fortress is the third-most influential of Akira Kurosawa's films (behind Rashomon and The Seven Samurai). Unlike many of the great Japanese director's best-known efforts, The Hidden Fortress has not been remade in another language, but ...

Those who know Akira Kurosawa only for his samurai movies (a genre that includes his most famous titles) may be surprised when exposed to the “other side” of his work – less ostentatious films like Red Beard, High and Low, and (most nota...

In the arena of American animated films, Pixar represents the Gold Standard and it has been thus since the arrival of Toy Story in 1995. Over that span of more than 25 years, the animation studio has been responsible for very few duds so, when...

Call it the law of diminishing results. Akira Kurosawa’s 1956 classic The Seven Samurai (the first time this story was made into a movie) is a great film - a contender for one of the best 100 motion pictures of all time. (It’s at #32 on m...

Although Mean Girls is likely to be frequently compared to Heathers, and perhaps occasionally to Election, the movie it most strongly reminds me of is 1999's Jawbreaker. All four of these films offer a darkly satirical perspective of high school a...

Pulse is the latest Japanese horror film to receive an English-language remake. Not having seen the original, I can't make comparisons, but I can state that this is the worst translation within the genre to date, outdistancing such worthy contende...